Monday, February 23, 2015

Kharkiv Terrorist Act Opens New and Horrific Stage in War in Ukraine, Milshteyn Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, February 23 – A “new stage”
has begun in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, one that involves
terrorist actions like those in the Chechen wars but “with this important modification:
in this case, a nuclear power is suspected of terrorism” or possibly its “incompletely
controlled militants,” according to Ilya Milshteyn.

“This
in general can become an unprecedented historic event,” the Moscow commentator
says, “because up to now it has been considered that murders of innocent
civilians or the seizing of hostages is a weapon of the weak who do not know
any other means of dealing with an enemy” (grani.ru/opinion/milshtein/m.238306.html).

Or
alternatively it may mean that Moscow has weakened to such a point that it
feels it has no other alterantive. If that is so, Milshteyn continues, then “the
darkest suspicions” about Russian intentions will be “confirmed,” and it will
be time to stop seeking analogies as many have been doing and face up to a new and
greater horror.

“Suddenly,
it will become clear that the hybrid war which Russia has been conducting
against Ukraine will have been enriched by yet another means of carrying out
military actions,” a means that involves no negotiations with the other side
but only its destruction a la Putin’s earlier war against Chechnya wherever it
may be found.

In his Grani.ru commentary today, Milsheyn notes that “the
Russian-Ukrainian war has given rise to a large number of historical analogies,”
many of them drawn from the 1930s and quite “banal.”But there is an analogy closer to home which
may in fact be more suggestive of what is taking place.

“In part,” he says, “the war in the Donbas recalls both
Chechen wars, but with a change of roles and with this essential difference: a
nuclear power did not support Ichkeria and American miners and tractor drivers
with their tanks and artillery fire did not fight for Dudayev and Maskhadov.”

Until yesterday, Moscow’s war against Ukraine did not
involve “classical terrorist acts in major cities.” Now it does, and that “changes
the situation in a cardinal way.” Now, “the phrase ‘Chechen scenario’” takes on
an entirely new meaning than the one Putin himself suggested to German Chancellor
Angela Merkel at Brisbane.

In the version
of a Chechen scenario Moscow would want the world to accept, Kyiv would do what
Moscow did in Chechnya, exploiting a terrorist act to destroy the local
population and impose its own loyalist in power. But Ukrainian President Petro
Poroshenko has rejected this scenario out of hand -- in part because he views
those fighting against Kyiv as Moscow’s agents.

Ukrainian
security officials have already announced that they have found links between Kharkiv
and Russia (top.rbc.ru/politics/22/02/2015/54ea41e89a794769ad096c1c),
as one might have expected regardless of what the case ultimately turns to be,
Milshteyn says. But such links are not as implausible as many might be inclined
to think.

Some will
insist that Putin is too “pragmatic” to use such a tactic given that Russia is
already suffering under sanctions and would face even power. But “the problem
is that it is long past time to forget about pragmatism when speaking about the
foreign policy of Russia,” the Moscow analyst says.

“Life in the
regime of special operations presupposes an entirely different means of
accounting,” and consequently, it is entirely possible that “in these
conditions a terrorist act is a continuation of policy by other means … a
logical and consistent one” if hatred dominates thinking and if those making
the decision feel they have nothing to lose.

Many Moscow
commentators share Milshteyn’s analysis if not his call for caution before
reaching any final decision.In a note
on Kasparov.ru today, Yevgeny Ikhlov writes that “there is no legal, political
or moral difference between the organizers of the explosion at the Kharkiv
demonstration and the organizers of the explosion at the Boston marathon in
April 2013” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=54E9F5952DC0B).

And he suggests that if the
investigation shows links between those who carried out the Kharkiv bombing and
the pro-Moscow secessionists in the Donbas, then he would advise Kyiv to introduce
a resolution in the UN Security Council and General Assembly” that would
declare the Russian Federation “’a sponsor of international terrorism.’”